Hello, I'm Bubbles!This little guy is a Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle! He was found at Padre Island National Seashore (https://www.nps.gov/pais/index.htm)Stuck inside a bottle!

On a trip to Padre Island, my family and I were down at the beach. While we were playing around in the waves, my sister spotted something blue floating at the surface. We went over to check out what is was. We knew it must have been marie debris of some sort.

It was a small blue bottle. I picked up the bottle and two fish fell out. The fish swam away before we could get a good look at them. I took the bottle back to shore when something small and black fell out of the bottle.

It was a baby sea turtle! I hurriedly grabbed a bucket, filled it with water and placed the turtle inside. The turtle did not move for a few moments and we thought he was dead. It was sad to see the baby turtle floating at the surface of the water. It made me feel as if I needed to do more to protect sea turtles like this.

​​The turtle started moving around after a few moments and i can only guess he was resting after him trying to get out of that bottle. He kept rubbing his eye which made me think something was wrong.

We started to load up into the car ready to take the turtle up to the visitor center when a Sea Turtle Inc. car drove by. We yelled and waved for them to stop. The volunteers stepped out of the car and came over to us.

We told them what happened. They thanked us and took the sea turtle for recovery. I showed them the bottle he got stuck in ; the volunteers told us that the small curved part in the rip on the side of the bottle was a turtle bite. ​

This is just one example of how our trash affects the environment. 80% of deaths that come to sea creatures are due to our waste.

We can stop things like this happening by being mindful of what we put in the trash, start using reusable items such as : reusable bags, metal straws, and reusable bottles.

One thing to keep in mind is "even if you throw it away, it can still end up else where."